Inching Towards Beta - A Post for Literary Geeks

(Posted Mar 3, 03:12 PM)

OK, so I confess: I sometimes shock myself with my own geekishness. But there seem to me to be useful parallels that can be drawn between the release cycle of software and the writing of a novel. Everyone pretends that novels are born, perfect and fully armoured, from out of the heads of their creators. Even novelists can fall prey to the dark suspicion that for other novelists, things are born pristine, appearing in their perfection on the first draft. But of course, it is not like this. Writing a novel is a long process that involves many stages and (often as not) a large number of people. So here I’m going to give a run-down of the process of writing a novel, especially for you geeks out there.

Initial Concept and Planning: this is where you say, “Hey, what the world needs is a novel about a man who keeps Armadillos in his garden shed,” and so you go to the library and get out a copy of Keeping Armadillos as Pets, The Life Cycle of Placental Mammals, Hoover Hogs: A Record of Curious Dishes from the Depression and other such important and timely works. You read everything there is on Armadillos (and garden sheds), you sketch out grandiose schemes, you produce flow-charts, you draw diagrams, you bore your friends senseless with your ideas, you scribble pages of notes…
 
Pre-Alpha: …but then comes the first draft, the pre-Alpha release. First drafts are designed to break down. Perhaps you get half way through only to realise that you are not interested in Armadillos at all, but rather in the place of the garden shed in the middle-aged male’s psyche. Or you write pages of garbage – you really should have done more research – on the precise texture and colour of armadillo eggs, before you realise that they don’t lay eggs, or… well, you get the idea.
 
Alpha: So you squash the major problems (“bugs”, you will call them if you are a true geek), restructure, move this bit here and that bit there, you spend ages shifting stuff around, adding things, taking them away, attempting to prune your worst excesses and to bring at least a bit of clarity and focus to the whole. Then you sit back with satisfaction and realise that you have something that, for all its roughness, is in basic working order. It doesn’t crash all the time, but only every other page. It has its own coherence. It is beginning to know what it is. It is now that you send it to your army of testers – friends, advisers, agents, whoever you have available – to see what they make of it. They get back to you with long lists of problems (“bugs”, remember), suggestions about the things that need pruning, features that you need to add… you get back to the drawing board…
 
Beta: … and eventually come up with a Beta release. Something that is ready for real-world testing, that you can let out of the closed circle of developers to see how it fares in the world. You send it to a publisher and wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually the publisher gets back, and they say, yes, they like it, in fact they have been waiting years for a book this good about Armadillos, but they want to make some changes. They appoint an editor and you get to work. Next the copy editor is brought in. And enventually, after more haggling than you would have thought possible, you come up with something that looks like a finished novel.
 
Release Candidate: You have, that is to say, a Release Candidate. Or, in the lingo, a book proof. This is the time to go over everything a final time, to make sure there are no typos, no blunders, no obvious untruths about Armadillos or sheds. But time is short. The public are champing at the bit. The release date is set. Everyone is running round like a headless chicken. But at the final hour, everything comes together, all being well. Its time for your Stable Release.
 
Stable Release (1.0): The moment of truth. The novel is sent out there into the world. At this point, it is only natural to begin to fret anxiously over the bugs you have overlooked… Oh, you think, if only I’d not said that on page 129… It is, however, too late. Let’s just hope it doesn’t crash too often.

But enough of this! I’m hard at work on A Lament for Ivan Gelski, which is inching towards a beta release. Back to work!

 

  1. Are you sure you’re a Buddhist? You don’t seem sane enough. One way or another, great post, man.


    — Dave    Mar 8, 03:49 AM    #
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